One Crazy Summer!
Three Girls on a Journey!
Traveled 3,000 miles for a Hug?
Imagine being sent to Oakland, California in the summer of the 1960’s to stay with your mother who left you and your two sisters when you were little. Your grandmother, Big Ma, always talks about how no good of a woman your mother is and how you should never stay with her. How would you feel? Well in the book One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia, nine year old Vonetta, eight year old Fern and eleven year old Delphine has to do just that.
From the first time the three sisters saw their mother, the mother who was as tall as a man, wore man pants, had a scarf and sunglasses around her face, they knew that they were in for a crazy summer. Delphine has always been told by her grandmother, Big Ma, that Cecile left them because she couldn't name her daughter, one of Delphine's sisters, Fern whose birth name is Afua. She also says that Cecile doesn’t care about them and the three sisters are starting to think that is true. When Delphine and her sisters arrive at their mother’s Green Stucco House, they have to learn to adapt to their mothers ways and rules of eating takeout food, sleeping in the same room with her sisters, not being able to cook or go inside the kitchen, staying out of the house all day and having Fern not being called Fern but “little Girl.” When Delphine and her sisters are out of the house, they go to a community center run by the Black Panthers. At the center, Delphine and her sister’s learn a lot about the Black Panthers, more than what they would have learned if they had stayed in Brooklyn for the summer. The summer in the year of 1968 for these girls, roll on day by day, week by week, the same pattern each day with a little twist once in awhile until one day when the girls come back from a trip to San Francisco. Cecile doesn’t show that she cares about the girls but in the end of the book you find out that even though she has a tough way of showing it, she does love them somewhat. Also during this time, there is a lot of action going around with the Black Panthers, a group of African Americans that protest for their rights. At one point in the book Delphine gets scared because she has heard that people bomb the black panthers and she doesn't want her sisters to be in danger. It is her job to keep her sisters safe.
Character Traits
Delphine, the Responsible 11 year old
Spotlight On History
The Educational-Crazy Summer 1.The Black Panthers were a group of African- Americans that fought for the rights of African-Americans.They also fought against racism.
“I was sure they were the Black Panthers. They were on the news a lot lately. The Panthers on TV said they were in communities to protect poor black people from the powerful, to provide things like food, clothes, and medical help and to fight racism. Even so, most people were afraid of the Black Panthers because they carried rifles and shouted “Black Power.”
This connects to the time period because in the 1960’s a lot of anti-racism groups were formed and a lot of racism was going on.
2. Police arrested anyone apart of the Black Panthers or just black people even if they did not do anything illegal.
Page Number 171
“I was imagining what had happened. How Cecile didn't want them in her house. In her workplace. Where she only allowed me, and only at a distance. That the police might have touched her papers and picked up her letters with clumsy cop hands. Cecile might have gone crazy like I knew she could have, instead of saying “i’m a citizen and I have rights.” She and the Black Panthers might have demanded to see the policemen’s search warrant. She might have reached out to protect her poems. The broken stool told me more than I wanted to know.
This connects to the time period because during the 1960’s Black people were not treated fairly and would get arrested for things a white person wouldn’t.
3. Whenever African-Americans went anywhere where it was predominantly all white people, they got stared at.
Page number 162
“While we were arguing about what was Chinese and what was Japanese, I noticed this family of five tall blond people standing near us. I didn't eyeball them dead on, but I knew they were staring at us...I had to get my sisters away from these stairers.”
This connects to the time period of racism in the 1960’s because African Americans were stared at a lot by the opposite race when going places because they were hated so much.
4. Some white people liked African-Americans and didn't care about race.
Page Number 15, 16, 17
“A large white woman came and stood before us, clapping her hands like we were on display at the Bronx Zoo. “ Oh my. What adorable dolls you are. My, my.” She warbled like an opera singer.Her face was moon full and jelly soft, the cheeks and jaw framed by white whiskers. We said nothing “and so well behaved.”...Oh and so cute.” She put all of the nickels in Fern’s hand and pinched her cheek faster than I could do anything about it and was gone, as big as she was.”
This connects to the time period of 1963 because not many white people liked or even wanted to be associated with black people. There were only a few whites that liked and cared about black people and were nice to them.
Story's Place and Time
Connecting the Dates
1. President Johnson announces that he will not accept his renomination. (March 31 1968)
2. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis. (April 4 1968)
3. James Earl Ray is captured in London and indicted of murder (June 8 1968)
4. Richard M. Nixon became 37th President in the U.S. (Jan 20 1969)
5. Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins are the first men to walk on the moon(July 20 1969)
6. Kate Middleton and Prince William have their royal wedding at Westminster Abbey in London (April 29 2011)
7. Adam Lanza, kills 27 including himself, 20 kids 6 adult at Sandy Hooks Elementary School massacre. (Dec. 14, 2012)